Aging in Place Keeps
Homes Off the Market

By all accounts, the current crop of retirees should be the nation's most mobile generation of senior citizens.

After all, today's retirees are wealthier and healthier than ever before, making it easier for them to move to places like Florida, California, Arizona or another sunny spot. They also came of age in an era of widespread mobility for all Americans, meaning they're accustomed to the adventure and stress of changing locales.

But these days, more and more retirees are acting like Angelo Veneziano, a 67- year-old semi-retired civil engineer in Medford, Mass., who has no plans to go anywhere. Although Mr. Veneziano owns a condominium in Florida for vacations, his permanent home remains the two-story house he bought in 1963, because he and his wife want to live near their four sons and many friends. "We'll die in that house," he says.

It has always been true that not many Americans move when they retire. But now, even that small percentage appears to be declining. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only about 4.5% of Americans 65 or older moved during 1999, down from about 5.3% a decade earlier. (Census data on mobility for 2000 won't be available until later this spring at the earliest.)

Across the country, older Americans appear to be rethinking where they retire. Many are simply buying a second home while holding on to their original house. Others are staying put entirely, and some that moved to states like Florida years ago are moving back to the places where they raised their children.

"The migratory pattern has changed," says Helen Babcock, president of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, who says seniors in her area are either staying put or swapping their current houses for something else in town, often closer to the center of the city. "Our seniors used to retire to Florida," she says.

The trend is emerging in part because retirees have more money than before, which gives them more freedom. The American Association for Retired Persons in Washington says its surveys show 89% of respondents more than 55 years old desire to "age in place," up from 84% in 1992. But during years past, they didn't always have the financial wherewithal to do so. The Northeast, for example, generally has had a higher cost of living than typical retiree destinations in the South.

The long 1990s boom helped take care of that. Retirees "are doing well, they've made a lot of money, they don't want to leave the community where they have their lives," says Gopal Ahluwalia, research director at the National Association of Home Builders in Washington. Also, couples "have learned from friends and relatives that when you go far away and something happens to one of you, your friends and care-giving network are back where you were before," says Leon Harper, a senior-housing specialist for the AARP.

If the trend holds, it could give a boost to old-line, cold-weather, higher-tax states like Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, which worried they would lose larger percentages of wealthy retirees as the nation aged. Since retirees spend lots of money and pay lots of taxes, "the regions that retain their elderly populations will do better," says Allen Sinai, chief economist at Primark Decision Economics in New York. Some Northern cities and suburbs are lowering property taxes as a way to encourage more seniors to stay.

Companies are capitalizing on seniors who have decided to stay put. Del Webb Corp., a Phoenix home builder best known for its "active adult" communities near Sun Belt cities, has opened a community outside Chicago. Pulte Corp. of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., is building a 100-home community in Voorhees, N.J., targeted at retirees who have second homes but want to live on the East Coast most of the year.

But the trend has its downsides, too. A big one is that retirees who stay put are exacerbating the long-running shortage of available homes, especially on the East Coast. Retirees staying put "is a problem" in suburbia, says real-estate broker Adrienne Chadwin in Larchmont, N.Y., north of New York City. In her area, fewer than 10 homes are added to the market each week, even though the area has more than a hundred families waiting to buy. "Older people are supposed to be leaving these big houses, and one would expect that in this high-priced market, where sellers are calling the shots, they'd be doing it, but for some reason they're not," she says.

The trend also presents some vexing public-policy questions. For example, as they grow older, suburban retirees who "age in place" need more help with transportation.

The trend could always reverse. Charles Longino, a professor of gerontology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., says mobility could shoot up again as baby boomers -- the oldest of whom are now only 56 years old -- reach retirement age. "I would call [right now] the calm before the storm," he says.

But then again, if baby boomers are anything like Mr. Veneziano, it might not. Mr. Veneziano says he likes being able to walk to one of his sons' homes. Besides, economics argue against a move. Although he could make plenty of money selling his house -- he bought it for a price "in the low" $20,000s and now it is appraised at about $350,000 -- home values have soared so much he feels it would be hard to find anything comparable for a decent price. Considering the advantages of staying put, he asks, "Where am I going to move to?"

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